Dissertation Abstracts 2001-2002

Robert Arjet, "Gunplay: Men, Guns, and Action Films in the United States." Emory University, December 2002.

This dissertation considers the relationship between guns, firearms, and masculinity in the United States, especially as revealed in Hollywood action films. Differentiation between firearms (material objects) and (cultural icons) reveals that 90% of the people who kill with firearms are men, and no man in the US can entirely avoid the steady stream of images, stories, and myths that tell him guns are indispensable tools for the violent mediation of homosocial relationships. The five chapters explore different aspects of men, guns, and firearms. Chapter 1 examines who owns firearms, how they use them, and what actually happens when men (and very occasionally, women) use firearms violently. The results are contrasted with the depictions of guns in gunplay films and other media. Chapter 2 investigates the gun culture of the United States and describes some of its ideological underpinnings, such as the role of race and homosociality. The masculinist discourse of self-defense receives particular attention. Chapter 3 begins the study of gunplay films by describing the many ways that guns are used as tools for the violent mediation of the homosocial relationships that structure these films. Chapter 4 describes the history of gunplay in US film, and investigates the ways that gunplay produces meaning through the use of myth or fantasy. Scenes of gunplay are compared to sex scenes, dance scenes, and martial arts scenes. Chapter 5 takes an in-depth look at the style and logic of the gunplay scene, finding that the overriding logic of these scenes is the lethal will of the attacker. This lethal will is expressed through consistent tropes in gunplay films such as the heroic massacre and the final fight. The conclusion discusses the ways that gunplay reflects the challenges that men in the US face in mediating their relationships with other men. Negotiations of both intimacy and violence rely on the signifying power of the gun, resulting far too often in actual firearms violence.

Laura Baker, "Capitalism Beautiful and Consumer Democracy: Civic Ideals, Mass Culture, and the Public in Chicago, 1900-1925." University of Iowa, December 2001.

At the turn of the last century, a modern consumer society based on the mass marketing of goods and services took shape in America's cities, profoundly affecting the contexts of public life and the discourses that shaped it. Focusing on Chicago, this study explores commercial and civic constructions of the public during this period and their complex relationship. It traces as well the shifting locus of these constructions from architectural to mass media forms. The study begins with the development in the late 1890s of broad, organized efforts by the urban middle-class to regulate free-market culture. Individual chapters concentrate on three sites of debate over the nature and meaning of the public: outdoor advertising, the 1909 Plan of Chicago, and movie exhibition. The study concludes by examining the community constituted by one of the city's new commercial districts, Uptown Chicago. During this period both civic and business leaders reconfigured commercial mass culture as an important foundation of "American" culture and as a key component of mass democratic society. It took multiple generations for mass culture to compare favorably with nineteenth-century genteel forms. Indeed, in the late 1920s when this study ends, social and cultural leaders were as likely to see mass culture as the downfall of American society as they were to see it as the key to its success. Yet, in retrospect, an overarching change is evident toward an idea of consumer democracy, a public ostensibly integrated and empowered through mass consumption. Identifying this reconceptualization of mass culture as a precipitate of both civic and business ideology is one of this study's most significant implications. While important differences distinguished civic and business conceptions of the public, their mutual promotion of the integrative powers of mass communication and consumption cultivated a common ground where consumerism flourished.

Davarian L. Baldwin, "Chicago's New Negroes: Race, Class and Respectability in...